Lessons

Lesson Info

What is an Asset?

Lesson three is really what is an asset? What is an asset on asset or a product? Or a program is a tool ah products a tool we buy products to help us accomplish something. Hopefully you've heard me say this before because I think it's a message that takes a little bit to sink it. We buy things two fix to change. Teo, help us achieve new goals. For instance, I'm drinking tea right now because I'm sick and I can't talk. They bought medicine for me this morning because I'm sick and he can't talk and hopefully there will be a lesson twenty eight. But anyhow, this's a this is a product that is a tool for me. I need to drink this so that I could talk to you. Uh, the clothes I wear are a tool. I also forgot my blazer in my hotel room this morning. Very bad. I was very, very sad. They went to get it for me. You know why my blazer is important for me? Because when I put my blazer on, I've become a different person. I'm not terror that woke up, you know, all dishevelled and looking crazy and not...

feeling capable of teaching for hours and hours on end it all I put my blazer on and I am ready to go have talked that way about my jewelry before to my jewelry helps me feel like I am stage ready where I am in authority where I ca n't teach where I can advise these things are products that help me achieve ghouls and legacy and we're not just talking about information products, all kinds of products, every kind of product if you buy it, you buy it for a reason even impulse purchases why do I goodbye gum before I get on a plane? Because gum is a tool for me to not get motion sickness when I'm on a plane it's an impulse purchase it's the you know, ninety nine cents at the register but it's still a tool your service is also a tool, but that transformation seems a lot more obvious but realizing that your product is also a tool or that the product that you're going to be creating us also a tool will help you make the transition from service to product. Now I'm not gonna have you guys do this because we already talked about this, but you know each of our panelists create a different kind of tool. We have a conference, we have a membership community, we have a retreat, we do have an information well two kinds of information products you know ones of course one's a workshop there are all sorts of different types of assets. The first is you're not the first, but I'm going to go through a whole bunch of them here one kind of asset is a methodology just like quiet power strategy quiet power strategy is a system a methodology that allows me to get results for people it's a siri's of tools and conversations that you need to have with yourself as a business owner so that you can double your revenue and reduce your workload that's what quiet power strategy is it's a system a methodology you can sell that uh an app or software that's a tool or that's a that's a type of asset? The example here is edgar by lara roader that tool or that product that asked that edgar is a tool for helping people get more out of their social media that's what she used to do as a service now it's her product you can create a course like graham cochran's the recording revolution courses graham eyes a creative live instructor on he'll be featured on our upcoming creative live podcast on dh he created courses out of what he knew about recording technology you can write a book like quirkyalone by sasha gegen books are great tools books are about the cheapest, most transformational thing thatyou khun dio right if transformation is big for you, writing a book is a great next step corey, I know you're just you're in the almost there right in my bag right outside? Yes, you're almost there almost there, all right? You can create a community like simple scrapper. I also have a membership community called kickstart labs on dh communities are great assets because they are they often result in recurring revenue they often are built on, you know, the community connections between people, the real people oriented type of product or asset or then you could create an event or an experience like the what if conference that's absolutely a product and asset as well, it's something that you own it's the idea it's the system it's the point of leverage that you own and distribute that then allows you to create scale from there. So the question I do want to ask you guys is how did you choose what you were going to create? Because this I know is a really big concern for a lot of people they and they they tend to fixate on this particular question. Well, you know, I've got this service or I've got this idea, but I don't know what to make out of it, and so they fixate on the format of the product instead of the function of the product so I just I want to kind of start easing into this a little bit how did you guys choose what kind of asset what kind of product you were going to create bridget let's start with you yeah I actually originally went back and forth between having in community or of course or maybe a methodology um and I ended up with the workshop that I have because I felt that for me a community is actually more of a time money trade like I get really trained when I have emails and messages and things on my calendar and so it was kind of a selfish thing actually of like how can I get people tto learn this material and have a transformation without having to serve them in a way that was tough for me to maintain yeah but that's the perfect question that is the question how do I get these results with the constraints that I want to apply the constraints where I didn't want emails I didn't want things on my calendar so how could I thunk how could I format the results or the process so that I didn't have those things that's exactly it cory you explain what you see is the difference between a course and a methodology yeah that's a really good question I actually hadn't thought about that I just was thinking about it like it just made sense in my head I would say a methodology is something oh, I know what the difference is a methodology would be something that you could teach someone else so that they could also offer it whereas the course is like a piece of intellectual property that kind of stands on its own wow, that was really really good question yeah that's something else that I should say is like, you know, it was part of my story but all kind of put a point on it right now is the quiet power strategy is actually something that I teach other people now s oh, there are a group of strategists in training right now that are learning the quiet power strategy methodology so that they can take it back into their business strategy practices and work with their clients and kind of added into their small group programs and things like that. John how did you decide to create the conference? It was actually born out of resistance to current conference options so as a professional photographer there is a few big event that you attend each year and my husband and I who was also my partner my business at the time we're walking through the conference were looking around or like wait if we're creative people, why are we conferencing like lawyers and doctors and real estate agent and all these sort of typically non creative not to say they're not creative but you know what I'm saying? Like the non creative industries there's gotta be a better way and so we molded over for a while and like several months later, he just turns me because what if we just did it? And I was like, what if we did way named to the what if conference we had our speakers or location on our website and we're selling sales within three weeks are selling tickets with three weeks way just found a hole in the market and fixed it love it? Yes, so we're going to talk about that coming up in a couple of lessons, I think we're going to talk about finding your unfair advantage and often you're unfair advantage is a giant gaping hole in the market it's something that you value something you know, something that's part of your particular value set but something that's not represented out there in another way that was it for me with a quiet power strategy as well. I could see all of these business building courses that were out there, but largely they were geared to people who are just starting off in business. So I saw two whole one I saw that people really wanted hands on support they wanted, you know, that process of coaching of advising and they wanted something that would get them past phase one and into phase two or from phase two and into faith three and so that's how I designed that as well so that you know, I couldn't just build another course out of it. It had to be different and so asking the question that bridget asked how do you go about doing that? What does that look like? So great example, how about one more jennifer I'm curious how you decided on a community. Well, I started out creating very small information products and creative tools, templates and things for people, and I found that I was going to have to manage a shop, but I would have all this virtual inventory and then I would have to deal with the customer service of resetting people's download links and it just became way too complicated and I would have to continue to market every new product that I was gonna launch. It was going to do like five to ten every month and it just was going to be unsustainable so I could still create a lot of the same items but put them in a membership and sell this as this experience that not only had these tools but also had the people in the support from both me and our community to be able to use those tools. Eso creating a community for you was about not only that question of constraints, what do I want to stop doing in my business? But it was also about how can I add value on and I think that that's something that a lot of people worry about with products is like well, when I switched to a product, it will be less valuable doesn't have to be a product an asset could be more valuable then your your service than the thing that you're offering one to one that is a complete you know speaking of mindset shifts that's huge how could you make your product more valuable than the service that you offer? What would that look like? You know, a lot of this is actually a lot of thought experiments that's a great thought experiment for everybody to dio what come my product look like if it was more valuable than my service, another one that I've done with that is what would my product look like or what would my service looked like if I charged ten times more for it? Well, with my product or service look like if I charge ten times more for it because obvious often when you answer a question like that, your brain hops into a creative area that it's just not normally we get stuck in these ruts of what our service has to look like about what a product would look like in our industry when you ask questions like that, you can really break out into a very creative space and start to see how you could do things differently bridget did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, when you were saying that I was thinking about the workshop that ideo so like with the scope of work that I have it's so narrow and so, you know, getting in fast company or forbes or something like that, but the methodologies I've had people come back and say, oh, this applies to getting my products license, they're the supplies, all kinds of areas, and so when I create my workshop, we actually don't focus on pr messaging at all it's laying if you're rebranding your website here's, how you can figure out how your messages on your website concern on the market or if your block content isn't landing and so for me, that was kind of like taking my really narrow scope in my methodology, I'd even thought about it, but that was adding more value than the one the one work had yeah, it was broader for my audience perfect, so I'm gonna ask you guys, uh, this in just a second, but for now I'd love for you guys out there to tweet me. You can tweet me at tara gentilly, use the hashtag tear alive, even tweet at creative lives well, let me know what kind of asset do you think you might want to create? What kind of product program methodology course, what do you I think it's gonna look like so what kind of asked that do you want to create? I'd love to hear from ours students students now not that all of you guys aren't extremely accomplished in your areas of business. Uh, andy, um as a veterinarian there sort of ah ah hold there as far as you could keep up with the medicine part of technology and stuff but there's a whole with the whole marketing promotion, this forest had a market, your practice and all that I see a hole there where that could be an asset. Nice, excellent. Natalie I'm kind of working on the idea of combining course and software a little bit so kind for new business owners instead of buying like a kind of a clunky website theme and not knowing what content actually loaded in so that it's successful to kind of have a course that walks them through creating that content and then having a theme that's ready to use out of the box that's conversion optimized that they get the results that they actually need and have a little bit more structure and strategy before they just like pick something random and hope for the best perfect derecha think about a combination of of a book and a course that maybe will culminate into an event nice is connected perfect lots of things I like no surprises we're talking about the book s o that's coming out, I have three different classes that I already offer, and we have a conference that we're putting on for artist next summer, so actually, what I'm thinking about right now is how do I deliver all of these in a way that my audience understands where they should go or which of these assets they should pick up? Or do I do something like create a community and create it on and on all encompassing experience for my for my potential customers, I'm sort of looking at complexity perfect, yeah, awesome, michelle methodology all the way because I've realized over the past four years that I've been doing speak for impact, that I already have this process and methodology in place, the speaking collective has added to that, and I would love to get to a point where I'm not just working with speakers on their messaging and their positioning and their marketing, but also training other public speaking coaches howto help people with their messaging because there's no great methodology around that awesome melissa. Well, I I help people turn their creative taps to the on position so they can live full color lives, and I'm working on my second e book, I've taught a number of courses online, I've run retreats. Um, so I already do a lot of this stuff, but I'm also really interested in figuring out what the methodology is, and I've had people approach me, do you train people because I would like tio, you know, become licensed in what you do and and listening to you in the earlier lessons was really helpful because I've looked at what I do and like, I don't have no idea what the methodologies, so I'm going to be much more strategic about it. Fantastic. So I love the diversity that we have here, we've got some people who are kind of starting from scratch from their service or from what they offer, and we also have people that are really looking tio take things to the next level, which is fantastic, and I hope that you guys are thinking about taking things to the next level is, well, we also have an extremely diverse group here, so if you feel like, wow, I just I don't feel like my service or what I want to do is represent it out there in the online business world look to this group, these people are doing things very differently in all sorts of different ways and finding success with it on, so you can kind of kind of live vicariously through them for now and then you know on our during our breaks you know after you know when we when we wrap up different lessons take some time and make it work for you and you know throughout this class we're going to be hot seating a lot of these different students and so you'll really be able to dive in and see just how these kind of different processes break down so that you can go home and apply them to your business as well. Do we have some people respond on twitter? Okay so adrian meldrum at the tudor house says I want to take my methods were tutoring math and create video courses to reach more students perfect and rashi dobbs says listening to you tara has convinced me that the idea I've had for a live workshop is the route I want to take yes and finally genesis of modest in says definitely an online workshop course that will build into a community awesome perfect so we got lots of variety out there on the interwebs as well so I want to take one one more minute and just talk about why building an asset building a product into your business is so important if you are ready for more if you are ready to go from self employment to true business ownership you have tto have some sort of asset it might mean that you continue with service delivery it might mean that all you do is really formalized our methodology so that you could market in a much more leveraged way or it might mean that you get to do, you know, live the four hour work week and work from the beach that's either way is fine, but what building an asset allows you to do is to build true wealth into your business if all you are doing is working from paycheck to paycheck with your service and let's admit it that is what most of us are doing I have been there I have done that I understand it doesn't matter how much money you're making if you're working from client to client, it is just like working paycheck to paycheck in a day job it is just like it the on ly way you are going to break out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle that client to client cycle that time for money cycle is to build an asset into your business lots of different reasons one obviously is a potential for scale another is the potential for leverage which often means you get to make a lot more money working a lot less time or doing a lot less of the hands on service delivery another one that we don't like to talk a lot about in lifestyle business is exit strategy what's your exit strategy? Are you going to do this until you're ninety five I love what I do and I don't want to do it till I'm ninety five I love what I do, but if I am still on the creative life stage when I'm ninety five and it's not like to win some award so we're gonna have problems, right? I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life I want an exit strategy by creating an asset I could potentially cell that asset we're in the final stages of trademark development on quiet power strategy or creating a trademark that process drawing a blank on the world right now that trademark will be valuable it's valuable because of the intellectual property that's associated with that. If I decide twenty years from now, ten years from now, fifty years from now that I want to sell that I will be able teo, you can't tell your service you can't sell your job, I will be able to sell my business when I think about you know my plans for the future, the way I could take care of my family if something were to happen to me part of that plan is you can sell the business it's not the only part of the plan but that's part of the plan that is hugely empowering that is why having a business is such a hugely empowering and and, you know, position changing, life changing part of what you do, why you're here. So building an asset is not just to make you more money today, it's. Not just so that you can, you know, schedule yourself less. But it also is a plan for the future. So keep that in mind as we go through the rest of this class.